The business of the coronation at Bologna concluded, the Emperor betook himself to Germany in view of the great Diet of Augsburg, formally inaugurated in the summer of 1530, accompanied of course by his confessor, as the confessor was attended by his youthful secretary. And here it must have been that Servetus saw and may perchance have spoken with Melanchthon and others of the leading Reformers, among the number of whom, however, the greatest of them all did not appear. Luther’s friends believed that the danger he must run by showing himself at Augsburg was too great to be incurred. The brave man would himself have faced the peril, but his princely protectors positively forbade the exposure. They feared that at Augsburg the Emperor might be tempted to violate the ‘safe conduct’ he had been reproached by his Papal advisers with having so honourably observed at Worms; for there were still some among the Roman Catholics, high in place, so ill-informed, so blind to events, as to believe that were the head of the man who had inaugurated the movement which compromised their power but off his shoulders, the Reformation would collapse and die! Luther was therefore permitted by his friends to approach the scene of action on this occasion no nearer than Coburg. Neither at Augsburg any more than at Worms did matters proceed so entirely to the satisfaction of the Emperor as he wished, and may have anticipated. The Protestant princes, with little cohesion among themselves, showed, nevertheless, that severally they were more resolute than ever in their requirements touching religion, less obsequious too to the advances of their suzerain than he found agreeable. They felt themselves in fact, and in so far, masters of the situation, and had mostly quitted Augsburg before the sittings of the Diet came to a close, content to leave Melanchthon and his colleagues to give final shape to the business for which the Diet had been mainly convoked, and in the great RELIGIOUS CHARTER OF THE AGE--the Confession of Augsburg--to establish Protestantism as an integral and recognised element, not only in the religious, but in the political system of Europe. During his attendance on his chief at Augsburg, Servetus, though he saw and may have spoken with more than one of the distinguished Reformers, could have been an object of particular attention to none of them: his youth and subordinate position precluded the possibility of this. That he may have been disappointed at not seeing the original of the great movement which had brought together the august assembly he looked on around him, we may well believe, but we find no evidence in contemporary documents that would lead us to think he had ever come into contact with Luther, as has been said.[11] CHAPTER III. THE SERVICE WITH QUINTANA COMES TO AN END.